Basic Ed

About Basic Ed

Education in America is in crisis. This Basic Education Series podcast discusses what's wrong with the educational system and how to create a renaissance in education. basiced.substack.com (https://basiced.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Edward Jack Thompson

Category

education · kids & family

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 May 2022

Latest episode

6 Dec 2025

Latest episodes

39 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Dec 2025

   The Goals of Education

   Education can be a force for good or for evil. Why has education lost its way? Get a free digital copy of Making Sense. Transcript Hello again. Ed Thompson here. This is Basic Ed Episode 3, The Goals of Education. Today I would like to talk to you about goals. In order to establish an optimum educational system, it is important to discuss, examine and establish what the goals are for education. There may seem to be a great divide and many disagreements today over the best goals for education. I’m not so sure we disagree. For the moment, let’s make an assumption. Let us assume that the vast majority of people have a positive goal for the education of youth. That’s not to say that no one has a negative goal, but that anyone with harmful goals for education is an outlier. With that in mind, what are these positive goals that we all have for education? To find out, let’s start by naming the product. How would you describe someone who is an excellent product of education? What would they look like? How would they act? They would be smart, certainly smarter than they were going into education. They would be articulate, able to communicate ideas with relative ease. They could discuss a topic rationally and present an argument with some sense of logic, without resorting to name-calling and screaming. They would be productive. Their education should result in the knowledge and confidence to do and produce things of value. They would be largely successful on the whole, given their smarts and productive bent. They would also be good citizens, that is, getting along well with others and contributing positively to the society overall. The educational system itself would measurably raise everyone’s potential, and would produce a reasonable number of truly outstanding individuals who would become the new leaders in a wide variety of fields. Any educational system that produced these results consistently would be deemed successful by most people’s standards. I can’t imagine much disagreement there. So if we can all agree on the goals, why IS there so much disagreement when it comes to education? The disagreement comes into play when we examine what path and means should be taken to achieve our goals. There are two major paths to achieve educational goals. And these two paths stand in stark contrast to one another. One path puts heavy emphasis on training and social conformity. The group is all important, not the individual. You can see this in many school systems today. Classes of finite and repetitive length, that start and end with bells ringing to signal it is time to shuffle to the next classroom. Children are taught to stay in their seat, not to move, not to talk, and to comply. Data in large, doughy masses is shoved down everyone’s throat. Parroting back the right answer is rewarded with good grades. The unauthorized origination of ideas is forbidden. Any new or different idea is blunted. Propaganda is pushed at every turn, and conformity of thought is expected, required and validated. Divergence from any norm is frowned upon and punished. Authority wins every argument. If not authority, then mob rule wins out. Perhaps uniforms are required to help blend everyone into an equal mass. Equity of outcome is enforced. Even the curriculum, class plans and pacing are uniform. Everyone is pushed through the same material moving at the same speed. If you are getting the image or sound of a herd of cattle being driven along some path that would be appropriate. It is part of the essential philosophy behind this form of education. The other path for education places the focus on ability and learning data for use. Understanding and application are emphasized. The individual is important, and so is the group. It invites students to examine data and to decide for themselves which data is true, which data to accept and which data is important. Discussion and debate are encouraged, and students are asked to use their minds to solve problems. Differences are recognized, expected and accepted. Students are different, so they work at their own pace in different subjects, staying with each task until they have mastered it before going to the next. Competence is the goal that is rewarded. Outstanding achievement is recognized and validated. A student’s interest is consulted whenever possible. Differing viewpoints are not only accepted they are encouraged. As you can see these are two radically different approaches to education. And yet we all want the same thing for our children. Success. As you might expect, behind these two approaches are radically different ideas. Let’s examine what those ideas are and where they come from. The primary difference centers around the subject of good vs. evil, but not the we are good, they are evil dichotomies of opposing political parties, different forms of government, or even religions and moral standards. Let’s face it, when it come to politics, the GOOD Democrats would certainly jail the EVIL Republicans, as they have already begun doing, and the GOOD Republicans would do the same to the EVIL Democrats and probably throw in a little torture to boot, given the chance. In any event, if full and free rein were handed to either political side, I have no doubt that firing squads would make a roaring come back. As for forms of government, plenty of isms and their many variations dot the landscape, and every one of them swears theirs is the best. To prove it, each one is all too eager to tear the others down, with guns if necessary, of course, for their own good. Religions do play an important spiritual role for individuals and for society, and religious moral codes have provided much needed guide posts for civilized behavior. However, religion has also been used to justify killing a lot of people over the millennia, usually because of what amounts to relatively minor differences among the religions. Killing that has not stopped yet, I might add. So let’s put those categories aside for the moment. There is a more basic, and I would argue, a much more important good vs. evil in play. A subject much closer to home for every one of us is the nature of human nature itself. Philosophers have debated the true nature of man forever. The linchpin of any philosophy ultimately comes down to one question. Is man basically good or is he basically evil? This very important question has no obvious answer. Many arguments have been made on all sides of the question. Whatever that answer truly is should dictate how we approach and deal with our fellow man. It will also inform our best approach to education, so let’s examine. If there is one universal idea that runs through all religions it is the idea that man is a spirit and that the basic underlying nature of that spirit is good, not evil. In fact, the great hope that all religions provide is the hope that no matter what has happened to one or what one has done wrong, that person can make himself whole again. He can recover to himself that good spirit. The opposite side of the coin is the idea that man is basically evil. Those who believe that usually don’t express it so directly. That would be too honest. Take the man is an animal camp. Lots of evolutionary talk about survival of the fittest and so forth, but the bottom line is that man is a savage beast who must be tamed and controlled for the protection of others, and of course, for his own good. This is behavioral psychology and the psychiatric brain theory at work. Both have produced destructive technologies for quote handling the mind of man like blood-letting, ice baths, institutionalization, strait jackets, electric shock, lobotomy, insulin shock, and the current favorite, mind altering drugs, which do all the damage the other treatments did, but in a socially acceptable and more insidious way. If that sounds like a list of torture techniques, it is. But every one of them was done to people as mental health treatment by doctors supposedly in the name of help. There is a third idea about man. One that, wherever it has been adopted, has even more catastrophic results. That is the idea that man is neither good nor evil, that he is not even an animal. He is merely an inanimate object, a random set of atoms and molecules in motion, with no real thought, purpose or will of his own. This idea places man on par with rocks and sand and completely removes any individual value that might stand in the way of the totalitarian. These are the materialists and nihilists who can justify anything on the basis that it is all random anyway. Kill a few million people? No sweat. These are the same idiots who brought us the infinite monkey theorem. Actually it was theoretical mathematicians, but the materialists jumped right on board. That’s the theorem that says if an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, one of them would surely type the complete works of William Shakespeare. I’m here to tell you that will NEVER happen. I’ll take those odds any day. What those idiots fail to understand is that Shakespeare was not a monkey and he was not typing randomly. But this is the matter in motion theory of Karl Marx and Marxism that has led to countless deaths and cultural destruction wherever it has gotten a foothold. So there it is—the basic nature of man as a spirit vs. man as an animal or matter. Good vs. evil. Looking at education, man as animal and man as matter both lend themselves to the totalitarian mindset. If man is basically evil then he must be trained, forced into better thinking and behaving. Giving him freedom and choice would be a dangerous disaster. If he is merely matter, then he can and should be used, like a tool is used, to build the world that a certain few envision. Oh, to be those lucky few. Today our prisons grow and yet crime only worsens. It is common knowledge that prisons as currently operated make more criminals and worse criminals. They are a breeding ground for crime. And yet here in America we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other country in the world. There is a reason why punishment has such a poor record of behavioral reform. Beat a man long and hard enough and he will parrot back what you have told him to say and be silent on what you have told him not to speak. He will act as you have demanded and avoid doing what you have banned. But he will have no slightest responsibility for or control over any of it. Just like Pavlov’s dogs, he merely salivates on signal. And there’s the rub. With that way of thinking, it’s all or nothing. Total control or total chaos. There are no half measures that end in anything but disaster. The utopian vision that both Marxism and behavioral psychology hold out as the righteous end goal can never be reached unless all thought, and all action is reduced to mere salivation. By that point, I don’t think the word utopia would fit. Living hell just might. So there you have it. Two paths, one doomed to fail, and destined to destroy; the other, given a chance, can help man rise up to reach greater potentials, and accomplish the goals of education. The question is, which one do you want? That’s all for now. Thanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basiced.substack.com/subscribe (https://basiced.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   15 May 2025

   Who is Destroying the Health of our Youth?

   We are not getting healthier, we are getting sicker. American children are predicted to not outlive their parents for the first time in history. (Transcript for Who is Destroying the Health of our Youth? available below.) Making Sense and Knowing Numbers are available in paperback and digital formats at most major outlets. Learn More (https://basiceducationseries.com/education/) Transcript: Here we go. Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children -Malcolm X Hello again. Ed Thompson here, and I hope this podcast finds you doing well. This is Buried Lede #24, entitled, Who is Destroying the Health of our Youth? When RFK jr joined the Trump campaign and the MAGA movement he coined the phrase MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, and focused attention on an epidemic of major proportions here in America. Despite the advances in medicine and availability of treatments, despite the superior basic infrastructures that provide sanitation and drinking water for the vast majority, America has a decidedly unhealthy population. Poor health is epidemic. COVID-19 exposed how low the baseline health is in America. During the pandemic nearly all the COVID-19 deaths were the elderly with age and disease weakened immune systems, or younger people with multiple co-morbidities including asthma, diabetes, and obesity. The fact is, people with disease or compromised immune systems are always vulnerable. What is alarming is that currently this group represents nearly 40 percent of the American population. That would be more than 140 million Americans. Despite having the most advanced heath care system in the world, the US had the worst results from COVID-19. Despite spending the most money on health and medicine, the US has the least healthy population in the developed world. These two facts are not independent. As a nation, we are not getting healthier, we are getting sicker. The worst of this tragedy is happening to our youth. The next generation of American children is predicted to not outlive their parents for the first time in history. The young generation is fatter, sicker, and have more fertility problems than any previous generation. Autism has gone from 1 in 1000 to 1 in 20 and is still rising fast. According to the American Cancer society, cancer diagnoses are spiking among the young as never before seen. The buried lede is that we are actively destroying the health of our youth. It is certainly time to MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. Because it didn’t stop the disease or transmission, and because the 25 and under demographic was in near zero danger from COVID-19, the COVID-19 vax was unnecessary for most young people. Yet, we have and continue to jab our youth as young as six months old repeatedly. Babies have gone into shock after COVID-19 shots, children and young adults have had severe cardiac events, and aggressive cancers rarely seen in the younger population have spiked. And still we jab. And it’s not just the COVID-19 vax. The general vaccine schedule for children includes two vaccines at birth, eight at two months, four months, and six months, ten more at twelve months, and four more at fifteen and eighteen months of age. Twenty-seven shots before the age of two. There is a lineup required to get into kindergarten, and more throughout school. By the time they exit high school American children have had forty or more shots of eighteen different vaccines. More children every year are put on strong, mind-altering medications. Over six million kids are now taking one or more of ADHD, Antidepressant, Antipsychotic, Mood Stabilizer, Anticonvulsive, Anti-Anxiety or Sleep-inducing medications. These are the broad categories. A short list you have probably seen in ads includes Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, Prozac, Zoloft, Cymbalta, Elavil, Haldol, Abilify, Lithium, Xanax, Ambien and Lexapro. There are hundreds of drugs to choose from, with more created every year. Black box warnings on these heavy drugs are so numerous they require a separate large insert. While these drugs are supposed to be improving mental health, the rate of children and adolescents committing suicides and homicides has been steadily climbing as well. Doesn’t anyone care? All these supposedly healthful medications are coming from Big Pharma companies that have been fined over 123 billion dollars since 2000 for false or deceptive practices, fraud, or for selling poorly tested drugs that turn out to be either directly harmful or highly additive and ripe for abuse. Big Pharma is destroying the health of our kids. This happens because Big Pharma has captured the agencies tasked with overseeing and approving the drugs. The FDA and NIH are so deep in bed with BigPharma that they are virtually indistinguishable, with personnel revolving back and forth. Big Pharma money finances much of the testing and oversight activities, a clear conflict of interest. The food industry isn’t much better. Unless you live on a farm or grow your own food, you don’t stand a chance. Our grocery chains put empty-calorie processed foods on prominent display where kids can demand them from frazzled mothers. A recent Northeastern University study found that 70% of all the food products in a typical grocery store are ultra-processed with low nutritive value and artificial chemical additives. Europe outright bans ingredients that BigAgro in America prevents from even being put on food package labels. Is it any wonder we have unhealthy overweight kids? Hormones in meat and dairy products disrupt the endocrine system and accelerate or delay puberty, wreaking havoc on our youth. Toxins like pesticides and chemical food additives contribute to declining health. Over 72% of kids under eighteen are either overweight or out of shape or both. The age-standardized prevalence of overweight or obesity in 2021 among children and young adolescents was 36.2% in males and 37.2% in females. Among older adolescents, the prevalence in males and females was 46.7% and 50.8%, respectively. And it only gets worse with age. Do we fix or eliminate destructive food products and enhance nutrition, or expand physical exercise programs our children desperately need? No. The solution offered follows the medico-pharmaceutical profit model of only treating symptoms. Ozempic, a diabetes drug that alters hormone levels and intentionally disrupts the glandular system, was discovered to have a side effect of weight loss. Naturally, it is exploding as a quick fix for fat kids and fat adults who do not have diabetes. This has not been properly studied in long term, double-blind trials, but the already known potential side effects include thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, loss of vision, hypoglycemia, gallbladder issues, and kidney failure. Does that sound like making America healthy? The toughest thing to confront is evil. Our medical establishment, Big Pharma and the government agencies that are supposed to improve and protect our health are instead destroying health. Doesn’t get much more evil than that. And that’s the buried lede. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basiced.substack.com/subscribe (https://basiced.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   28 Mar 2025

   DEI Goes Underground

   Rooting out DEI requires more than a key word search. DEI is buried deep into educational, corporate and government material and culture. (Transcript for DEI Goes Underground available below.) Making Sense and Knowing Numbers are available in paperback and digital formats at most major outlets. Learn More (https://basiceducationseries.com/education/) Transcript: To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. – Marilyn vos Savant Hello again. Ed Thompson here, and I hope this podcast finds you doing well. This is Buried Lede #23, entitled, DEI Goes Underground. While we can breathe a sigh of relief in seeing the president commit to getting DEI out of government agencies like education and the military, actually getting this pernicious, destructive ideology rooted out is not as easy as signing an executive order. Springing from the Marxist doctrines of oppression versus oppressed, DEI came out of the gate with the deceptive name Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. After all, who wouldn’t want Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? Like so many Marxist Utopian ideas, that sounds good on paper but translates in practice to the worst of oppressions. Having segregated graduations or classes is divisive not inclusive. Telling children of color they are victims and white children they are racist oppressors is not diversity it is division. There is even an attempt to use supposed cultural norms to excuse poor academic achievement or behavior. The implication is that holding certain groups to the same standards as others would somehow be racist, when the complete opposite is true. DEI is not what it seems. Currently, it may not be acceptable to label programs with titles like DEI enforcement or DEI implementation, but the left in America have become master craftsmen in their cunning and willingness to twist and bend words to their Orwellian liking. I call it lying, but let’s be generous and say their euphemisms abound. To make matters worse, they are now papering DEI over with terminology that lends itself to reasonable justification by the not quite bright. One example in the Florida education system is The Leader in Me book, published by Franklin Covey, and used in Pinellas and other FL counties. While the initial stated lofty goals might sound like it is academically oriented, on page 13 is this line, “Greatness is not seen as affirming a high position or accomplishing a heroic feat, but as having strong character and unique talents which may or may not include the ability to read, write, or use a calculator.” That belies any pretense of actual education. Elsewhere in the program, the dedication to DEI is explicitly laid out, but you wouldn’t know that without thoroughly examining the materials. In the case of the University of Central Florida, the school’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion was simply renamed the Office of Access and Community Engagement. UCF kept Andrea Guzman, Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, by changing her title to fit the new, rebranded office. At Florida State University, the most recent Fall 2024 “Professional Drag Show” event was renamed “Owl Manor” to circumvent the law. The left would compare their subterfuge to the underground railroad of the pre-Civil War era helping slaves escape from oppression. I say it’s more like the Nazi trains carrying unsuspecting Jews and other disfavored people to “new and better” camps with freshly installed shower facilities. Right or wrong, the psychs who run the DEI program of Marxist ideology will not give up easily. For that reason, it takes more than looking for a few key words to alert you to the DEI presence in educational, corporate or government material and practice. DEI swept into education with no opposition, including weaving its way into the school texts themselves. Corporations were shamed into opening their HR departments to the so-called ‘experts’ who proceeded to enforce DEI and anti-racism indoctrination as requirement for employment. The Biden administration went flat out ramming DEI and anti-racism into every federal agency, including the military. The military recruitment numbers immediately tanked and have only begun to recover after Trump issued a no-DEI executive order since taking back the White House. So how do we eradicate the anti-American and divisive DEI and anti-racism that has worked its way into every corner of society? The starting point for each one of us is to stand up and call out DEI for being unworkable and destructive. Like most bad ideas, DEI can only persist when no one dares speak out against it. The time to speak is now. At the local level it takes talking out loud and challenging those who refuse to end DEI programs in school or at work. When someone says diversity is our strength, you say no, it is competence and unity that are our strengths. When they tell you it isn’t fair that outcomes are different, you say people are different and forcing equal outcomes despite those differences in intelligence, competence and work ethic is what would be unfair. When they say being inclusive means having to favor one group over another, you say, no, that is bias and exclusion at its worst. As for what to look for, the best way is to assess material by looking at it through the lens of what we should have as ideals. Is everyone treated fairly, is everyone given an equal opportunity, and is everyone expected to perform to the same standard to get any anticipated reward. A key with educational material is to roll up your sleeves and look for slanted ideas and unnecessary indoctrination that has been injected. Don’t buy lofty generalities or the outright lies denying that DEI or CRT is being used. You must follow the wisdom of look don’t listen, and read for yourself. Truth is always the great leveler, which should be the goal of any educational information. If we are teaching people how to think, and not what to think, everybody wins. This was once the goal of education that made great civilizations great. Looking at the entertainment industry, we see the abusive use of DEI. Trying to diversify World War II American soldiers who were largely white men into other races and women wouldn’t make any more sense than doing a story about a Congolese tribal war by including whites and Asians or depicting Henry the VIII or Thomas Jefferson as Asian women. Hollywood insists on going further. Instead of simply including a diversity of characters where appropriate, they make DEI the plot, with characters lecturing the audience with words or deeds to prove the DEI or CRT premises and shove them down the audience’s throat. You can make the straight people all stupid and mean, and the gays all noble and fair but that doesn’t make it any more true than making all blacks violent and dumb and all whites decent and smart, or all men brutal and all women caring. One key to spotting DEI at work is the generalizing of any group as good or bad. Group bias runs heavy throughout DEI, CRT, anti-racism and other Marxist or totalitarian ideologies. Pitting one group against another is the totalitarian way to power. A major flaw in DEI is viewpoint discrimination. For example, BLM, Black Lives Matter, is considered a valid and desirable viewpoint while ALM, All Lives Matter, is characterized as racist and wrong. When you find censorship and invalidation of viewpoints, you may have found DEI at work. There is good reason why the simple yet powerful themes laid down in America’s founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, are popular with all people. The idea that individuals have natural rights and freedoms and that those apply to everyone with equal measure, have resonated many times around the world. The truth is undeniable. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basiced.substack.com/subscribe (https://basiced.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

Podcast Authority Score: 39 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

68

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

27

Contact Basic Ed

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.